You know you have arrived when someone makes a spoof video about your movie. So the first intimation that My Octopus Teacher (Netflix) was the Next Big Thing, was when a real teacher made a video about his love affair with his Creepy Crawley.
Trailer:
Spoof:
It could be called Eight Legs and Me, and it sounds like an unlikely trend-setter: a documentary about a skin-diver and an octopus. And one of the criticisms is that the documentary itself is just crying out to be lampooned, with its portenteous narration and ‘truths about life’.
But having said that, the consensus is that it is a rivetting piece of work: beautifully filmed, inspirational and uplifting, a ‘road movie’ in the sense that it is about a human journey along with an unlikely companion. It is also about a habitat and a species that gets little attention in the mainstream media, which means that almost everything about it will be a revelation.
There is not much more to say apart from the fact that it has won numerous awards, created memes (the highest accolade) and enjoys almost universal praise. The second-highest accolade for a movie is when the reviews are also pieces of art. I was not drawn actually to watch the flick itself until I read this masterpiece from Daily Maverick:
It seems that creature features are the hot topic in entertainment right now, from the ridiculous (Tiger King) to the sublime (My Octopus Teacher).
So sign up Fido, he could be next.
